Every now and then, cinema gives us a piece of pure, low-IQ perfection. A film so absurdly hyper-masculine that it feels like it was conceived and funded by a room full of concussed linebackers who had just watched Cobra and drunk three crates of cheap lager.

Craig R. Baxley’s Stone Cold is that film.

Ex-NFL linebacker Brian “The Boz” Bosworth stars as Joe Huff, a loose-cannon cop currently on suspension for the crime of being far too badass for normal police work. Before the opening credits are even done, the film lays out its credentials: a gang of unhinged goons holds up a supermarket, and Huff casually stops them while grabbing a Snickers bar and wearing a flasher trench coat with shoulder pads so wide he has to walk down the aisles sideways. Naturally, he resolves the robbery by shooting through a flour bag and throwing a bloke into a glass display case.

The FBI’s response to this total disregard for procedure is to blackmail him into going undercover with The Brotherhood, a white-supremacist biker gang in Mississippi that runs drugs, murders judges, and generally behaves like a post-apocalyptic Mad Max tribute act.

So Joe adopts the alias John Stone. How does he prepare for this deadly undercover assignment? By hanging out at home in his sleeveless vest, blending a completely fucking deranged concoction of raw eggs, Snickers, crisps, banana, orange juice and Tabasco to feed to his giant pet monitor lizard, and looking like he was custom-built in a laboratory to lose the Intercontinental Title at WrestleMania VII.

The Boz isn’t acting here; he’s running an entire professional wrestling gimmick. He’s 240 pounds of bleached mullet, chest hair, and baby oil.

To infiltrate the gang, Stone has to earn the trust of its leader, Chains Cooper, played by Lance Henriksen, who delivers a performance so delightfully off-the-rails he seems to be fuelled entirely by black coffee and raw malice. Henriksen spends the whole runtime giggling like a lunatic, shooting beer cans off his mates’ shoulders and threatening to peel people’s skin off. Alongside him is William Forsythe as Ice, a second-in-command who looks like an aggressive leather-clad orc and spends the entire film eyeing Stone with immediate, jealous suspicion.

What follows is an absolute goldmine of early-90s trash cinema.

You get a fake assassination attempt to prove Stone’s loyalty, a high-speed motorcycle chase, explosions, shootings, biker warfare and enough testosterone to make the average gym locker room look like a Quaker meeting.

Then there’s Chains’ girlfriend Nancy, who falls for Stone because apparently being built like a brick shithouse and possessing a jawline capable of planing wood is all the romantic qualification a woman needs in 1991.

All of which pales into insignificance when we get to an ending so utterly ridiculous it belongs in a museum. Or at least, in a straight-jacket.

Chains straps a bomb to Stone’s chest and leaves him trapped inside a hovering military chopper while the Brotherhood launches a full-scale terrorist assault on the Mississippi State Capitol. Slipping on a Catholic priest collar and robe, Chains sneaks into the courtroom undetected and proceeds to massacre the Supreme Court justices and anyone else unfortunate enough to be standing in the wrong place.

Meanwhile, Stone manages to fight his way free from the bomb rig, escape the chopper, and charge back inside the building. During the ensuing hallway shootout, a biker mook tries to run him down on a motorcycle. Stone shoots the driver in the head, sidesteps the bike, and watches the runaway motorcycle launch straight through an upper-floor window.

Into the helicopter.

Yes.

A motorcycle.

The resulting collision sends the whole thing into a shower of glorious practical effects, because Stone Cold has apparently reached the point where basic laws of physics are merely suggestions.

And somehow, that’s exactly why this film is so much fun.

Stone Cold failed at the box office in 1991, but its reputation has grown considerably among people who appreciate their action cinema served with a healthy disregard for taste, subtlety and common sense.

It’s noisy, stupid, insanely violent and entirely unpretentious. Brian Bosworth spends most of the film looking like a professional wrestler who has accidentally wandered onto a film set, Lance Henriksen appears to be having the time of his fucking life, and the climax throws a helicopter and a motorcycle at each other because apparently somebody in the production office simply asked, “What if we did this?”

They simply do not make them like this anymore. And frankly, I’m not sure anyone should try.

But when you’re in the mood for a film this gloriously fucking stupid, Stone Cold is damn near perfect.